I actually liked the IS-M, and powergrinded it to get this...thing unlocked and bought today. Its...weird:

- 2k HP is nice

- the armor is...wonky, but when positioned right, its immensely powerful. Got 9k blocked game on my 3rd battle :^). Its bit like Kranvagn except sidescraper version of it, but the armor can bounce something outside of its perfect position, unlike Kran lol

- guns are...autistic as hell. 122 has very nice APCR velocity and good DPM with nice alpha and overmatch ability, but the HEAT sucks, its derpy and the APCR can feel powerless in terms of penetration. 130 mm is...autistic as hell. Nice alpha goes well with the HP pool, but 0.44 base accuracy is haHAA. Also its keks to roll for 370, and when your asking yourself ”why this gun exists”, you roll for 607 with the next shot...

- its slow, but I dont mind that, also the speed is fairly solid when downhill

I haven't played mine yet mostly because I'm waiting til i can buy gold to not play it without the top modules. I haven't heard great things about it - the IS-M is supposedly better for its tier and the fact that this thing's side armor is 90 and the IS-M's is 120 seems to make that opinion more true than not... but I'll let you know again when i actually give it a few matches

I actually play this with the 130mm. It's not that bad - the armor is generally workable unless you give the enemy time to actually aim/sling gold, sidescraping isn't fucking awful... the gun is definitely retard-strength RNG required to make it really work but if you're up close and personal with nerds like you should be then, much like the IS-7's gun, it's perfectly serviceable.

I've got about 70k xp left til the 705A and I probably won't free xp much of it.

Options

Soooo, I got a message when I loaded into the game this evening. "you have unused rewards please use before 1.4" Or words to that effect. I selected which tanks to apply the bonus to. Do I also have to assign the girl crew members? I vaguely remember from last year that you keep them, but as always WG's potato communication doesn't make it clear..... Just said I'd ask here to save myself from having to visit the main forums.

I hate that f*king capping mission for 260 (LTs)...
It's a hair-pulling nightmare. The description should seriously read "Go ahead and sit in cap circle and have fun while missing out on all the easy cleanup damage and enjoy your frustration after, when your teammates manage to kill the enemy team 2 seconds before you cap."
OMFG.. Any advice on how to do this without becoming crazy?